Involuntary

I did the forty minutes. Did them right—

the handshake, the figures, the practiced laugh

I've been calibrating since my twenties

into something that reads as my better half.

Two blocks out I found a single-stall

and locked the door and saw the shirt:

soaked dark from rib to rib. The body

keeping its own record of the work.

I peeled the fabric from the skin—

it came slow, like a label applied

too long to something it was never meant to.

I stood in that light. Tried

to identify the feeling.

Not shame. Something more like being seen

doing something true you'd been performing

as fiction. I folded the shirt. The machine

that dispenses paper towels was broken.

I dried my hands on my jeans and left.

The afternoon was warm. I'd done it well.

I'd been so careful with myself.